Over the past year the cost of the more traditional feed ingredients used in swine diets, corn, wheat and barley, have gone up by between 50 and 70 dollars per tonne.

Nutri-Health Group director of nutrition Russ Funk suggests producers need to look at all of the different ingredients available for swine rations.

Russ Funk-Nutri-Health Group

That varies everything from the wheat by-products, so that would be things wheat mids and wheat shorts and wheat mill run from the flour industry.

They've always been around but they've become more important as you try and replace grain with other things that are available.

Then we've got lentils, we've got peas that are becoming more and more available.

One of the problems with peas is they're there and then they're not there based on the human market and human demand for them but peas certainly are one big one I would say.

Then we have distillers grains and that's been mostly corn to this point.

There is some wheat distillers available but the research with wheat distillers has not been nearly like it has been with the corn distillers so, in terms of confidence for swine diets, there seems to be quite a bit more information so far on corn distillers.

Those are the ones that come to mind as the more frequent ones.

Every now and then you get into something that a broker says what about this and what about that so it's kind of a continual search for different ingredients that we may not have even heard of before.

Funk notes, when considering the various by-products, it's important to be aware that the quality and consistency of these ingredients can vary from processing plant to processing and according to geographic location.